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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Lost Civilisations: Mesopotamia

The great civilizations of Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria are covered in this episode. Throughout the episode, we continue with the question of how Mesopotamia was related to biblical stories. We get a nice comparison between the myths of ancient Mesopotamia and the bible. More in depth, we focus on a discovery in the site of Kumran in Israel, the Dead Sea Scrolls, which include some of the earliest versions of the Old Testament. The ties with Biblical Archeology and Mesopotamia is evident when we view how these earlier archeologists wanted to prove the existence of places mentioned in the bible. The discovery of the Moabite Stone was among the earliest finds that confirmed the existence of place names mentioned in the bible and this kind of discovery eventually lead archeologists to the Middle East in droves in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and led to Iraq. Present day Iraq is the home to the bulk of the civilizations that made up ancient Mesopotamia. We next move to Babylonia, whose capital was Babylon. The site was excavated in the 1800s and was yet another confirmation of Biblical Archeology. The ties here have to do with the "babylonian captivity" of the Israelites by Nebuchadnezzer. The film then moves on the to the discovery of the Assyrians ancient capital of Ninevah. Finally, we end up at the most ancient site of ancient Mesopotamia, the civilization of Sumer, about 3000 BC. It is here that the episode attempts to tie in the concept of an ancient "garden of eden ...Video Rating: 4 / 5

Follow the trail of clues that lead from the ancient myths of the Aegean world to their real-life counterparts.Video Rating: 4 / 5